Featured Analyses, September/October 2011

In advance of last January, two distinguished
organizations—UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization) and IUPAC (the International Union of Pure and
Applied Chemistry)—jointly proclaimed 2011 the International Year of
Chemistry.

The table (see Tab below) lists institutions according to two separate
measures: in the left-hand column, by total citations, and, at right, by
impact (citations per paper). The figures reflect papers published and
cited between January of 2001 and April of 2011 in more than 500
Clarivate Analytics-indexed
journals representing the range of subfields in chemistry. The listings
derive from the Essential Science IndicatorsSM, a database
within the Clarivate Analytics Web of Knowledge® platform.

Admittedly, this is a broad-brush treatment at a highly aggregated level. A
smaller or more narrowly focused selection of journals, of course, would
produce different listings. The aim here, however, is to identify some
prominent players in the field as a whole.

The total-citations measure, as has been frequently noted in these pages,
tends to favor large institutions that produce a high volume of research
reports, and the accompanying table provides several examples, particularly
in cases of organizations that contain many component institutions. Atop
the citations listing, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, comprising nearly
100 separate research institutes, represents one such instance, as do the
placements for large research agencies in Germany, Russia, France, Spain,
and Japan.

Nevertheless, smaller institutions also emerge in the total-citations
column—notably, the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla,
California. Despite the institute’s overall slant towards
biomedicine, and a comparatively modest output of roughly 2,100 Thomson
Reuters-indexed chemistry reports in the last decade, Scripps fielded
several high-impact chem papers. The highest of these is a report on "click
chemistry" from Scripps researcher and 2001 Nobel chemistry laureate
K. Barry Sharpless and colleagues (H.S. Kolb, et
al., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 40[11]: 2004, 2001), now cited
nearly 2,500 times. Thus, Scripps, with an average of nearly 42 cites
per paper, tops the impact listing.

Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, MIT, and Georgia Tech also distinguish
themselves with appearances on both lists.

Meanwhile, the graphs follow some larger trends in international
publication over the last couple of decades. The topmost graph tracks
shares of world chemistry papers between 1991 and 2010 from three main
geographical entities: the United States, the principal 15 nations of the
European Union, and Asia Pacific, including Japan and China. (View the
Global Reseach
Reports* from Clarivate Analytics for more information).

As the graph shows, the European Union and the United States have both
steadily surrendered world share in the course of the 20-year period, while
the Asia Pacific group has climbed ever higher in its portion of world
chemistry—from less than 20% in 1991 to nearly 45% in 2010. Powering
this increase was China, whose annual output of Thomson-indexed chemistry
papers increased from roughly 2,100 in 1991 to nearly 30,000 in 2010.

If the world-share graph seems to paint a comparatively dire picture for
the United States and the European Union, the graph showing "relative
impact" demonstrates that, in terms of the citation influence of published
research, the two regions are still predominant. The citation impact for
chemistry papers featuring U.S.-based authors, as tracked in overlapping
five-year periods since 1987, comfortably surpasses the world average for
the field (represented on the y-axis as 1.00), although the figures are
trending downward in recent years: from 61% above the world chemistry
average during the 2004-to-2008 period, to 58% above for papers published
and cited between 2006 and 2010.

By contrast, the relative-impact mark for the European Union, although
closer to the world average than the U.S. score, is on an upward
trajectory. And while the Asia Pacific group, as a whole, has yet to attain
the world average, it too is trending upward.

The final graph offers a more detailed look at relative impact, with a
selection of individual nations. Mirroring the previous graph, the European
representatives—Germany and the United Kingdom—are on the rise.
Japan holds steady, having begun to surpass the world mark around the late
1990s. India tracks steadily upward. But it’s China that, despite
sharing India’s start well below the world mark, appears to be on a
particular upswing in recent years, showing itself yet again to be the
nation to watch.

Global Research Reports

Clarivate Analytics launched the Global Research Report series to inform
policymakers about the changing landscape of the global research base.
Selected countries are profiled across scholarship production, emerging
fields, global collaboration, and past/future trajectories. The Thomson
Reuters data analysis allows a profiled nation to assess its position while
offering other international players opportunity to evaluate and adapt
their role to ongoing shifts in global research.

SCI-BYTES SPECIAL FEATURES

Keywords: Chemistry, research in chemistry, high-impact chemistry,
International Year of Chemistry, Scripps Research Institute, world
chemistry.

Featured Image: Seeds are encased in acrylic poles used for the facade of
the Seed Cathedral, the centerpiece of the UK Pavilion at the Shanghai
World Expo site, in Shanghai March 15, 2010. The 20-meter-high cube-like
Seed Cathedral is covered by 60,000 slim, transparent acrylic rods, which
will quiver in the breeze, according to the official website of Shanghai
Expo. REUTERS/Aly Song.